


The Boy From Mars

by goodnightfern



Series: 2017 Supply Drops [2]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Beach Trip, Gen, bento boxes, the new adventures of superboy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:01:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightfern/pseuds/goodnightfern
Summary: It's in Kazu’s genes to be the nail that sticks out.For wish #137, "ANYTHING" regarding: Kaz's mother.





	The Boy From Mars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [9755132](https://archiveofourown.org/users/9755132/gifts).



> I'm a self-indulgent jerk and wanted to expand on a brief mention of a memory Kaz has in one of my other fics *shrugs*

The gulls are so loud today. She squints up at the sky, one hand a shield for her eyes. Seems like she hasn't heard the gulls screech in a long time, though she's always swatting the same birds out of the garbage in the alley behind the shop. Today she only has to shoo a few before setting down the blanket. The lunchbox tin, teabottle, and two rocks hold down the corners. Kazuhira's already running for the water, but the waves are still cold this time of year. He squeals and leaps back from the shoreline.

"Told you so," she calls, and he stomps his little foot in a curve of glassy water. At low tide the waves only roll gently over the sand. Good thing, though, no danger of him trying to swim and getting stung by a jellyfish or drowning or getting dragged out to sea by a riptide. With a kid like Kazu, there's always some disaster around the corner.

Today seems safe enough. The lighthouse beach is near empty. It's a workday, after all, but the shop is closed for repairs. Someone threw a brick through the window a few weeks ago - with a word painted on it she doesn’t care to repeat - and it seemed as good a time as any to hop on a train with her boy and go to a beach she hasn’t been to in a long time.

Seven years ago, was it? With her blonde American?

The American who helped her hire a workman for the window isn’t blonde. She wouldn't go to the beach with him, but he’s nice. Too nice. He gave Kazuhira a chocolate bar the kid picked at before asking him if he ever knew a man named Miller, _again._

One day he'll stop asking, but right now Kazu is laughing and dodging the waves is the new game. He screams when she sneaks up behind to tickle him, falls over giggling and twitching in the sand.

“Watch out! The water’s coming back!” she laughs, and Kazu gasps. She skips back as he gets splashed in the face.

Maybe that wave was a little rough, but Kazuhira is a tough one. Grinning through the sea and sand on his face, he pulls himself to his feet.

"I’m gonna get you for that, Mama!”

“Come and catch me, then.” She sticks out her tongue and then it’s on. She kicks off her sandals to run circles around Kazuhira.

“You’re too fast!” he wheezes, flinging himself at her, until she gives up and lets him tackle her right in the gut.

Sighing, she drops dramatically to the sand. Kazu crawls on top of her all warm and squirmy, his tiny hands trying to tickle her, and she fights him off until they're breathless and gritty and laughing. She tries to pin him down in a hug, but Kazu peels away from her to squint at something else. His brows pull together when he's worried, like an old man already.

Leaning up on her elbows, she follows his eyes to another family coming down the steps to the beach.

“Kazu…” she starts, but Kazu just climbs off her, eyes narrowed.

He hasn’t learned how to turn the other cheek yet. She can see it starting, the quiet anger in the way his shoulders tense. The redness of his cheeks.

“Kazu, don’t.”

“I know.” He deflates. Pouts. “It can’t be helped.”

The mother purses her lips and looks away. The father ushers them further down the beach. But the children still stare, until the mother hisses something.

She sits up and tugs on her top to shake the sand out. Runs her hands through her hair and hopes she looks decent. By the time another few people make it to the beach they’re off to the side. Kazu is building a sandcastle and she’s sitting demurely on her blanket.

So many people even on a workday…

Ah, well.

It’s still never going to be enough to dye her son’s hair. In the bright sunlight Kazuhira is in his gleaming and golden element. He’s going to be so handsome when he grows up. She takes a sip of cold tea, watching his lips stick out in a pout over his sandcastle.

A wave splashes him from the back and he squeals again. Puts his hand out to catch his fall right into his sandcastle.

“Mama!”

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “You can build another one.”

“A bigger one,” he says stubbornly.

“That’s the spirit.” She smiles. “Kazu. I want you to build me the biggest sandcastle I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re old. I don’t know what kind of sandcastles you’ve seen.”

Clever kid. “Then you’ll just have to work as hard as you can, won’t you?”

The one thing her boy will never do is back down from a challenge. One of these days he’s going to - no, it’s good for him. It's in Kazu’s genes to be the nail that sticks out. Can’t be helped, so she tells him when he lingers at the window watching the other kids go to school.

Kazu will make it out of Japan one way or another. He likes Mickey Curtis and the American Superman show on the transistor. Likes to tag around behind the soldiers in the shop, too shy to speak but always staring. Some of them take a liking to him, some of them cuff his ears, but he never stops. Even now his pinched frown has turned in a grin as he mold wet sand with his hands.

“Looking good,” she tells him. It is quite a heap of sand.

“Not good enough.”

“You can work on it later. Aren't you hungry?”

“Not yet.” He stands up and crosses his arms, circling his sandcastle with a critical eye. “It needs... something more.”

Something more is a ribbon of seaweed around the base. A few shells jutting out. The sandcastle is taking form now, something out of a European fantasy book. A big castle with turrets and walls, and Kazu starts hunting around for driftwood to build a fence.

She starts getting their lunch ready. A few precious rice balls, some of Kazu’s favorite pickles. The apple is still uncut, but she brought a small paring knife to make the bunny slices. They’re a little tricky to do, she was never much of a cook, but it looks cute and makes Kazu happy. It's the kind of thing those other kids find in their lunchboxes at school.

She nearly nicks her finger trying to get the ears right, but the important thing is that she didn't this time.

“Bastard!” a shrill voice shouts, and then she really does nick herself.

Kazu is red, fists bunched. One of the boys from the other family is holding the seashell Kazu must have been going for, taunting him. Where are his parents? She trips over her own feet in the sand, but it’s too late, the other boy is bigger and she isn’t fast enough to grab Kazu before he’s cruelly shoved to the sand facefirst.

“Stop it!” she cries, but the other boy is already stepping on his head and oh, there are his parents. Too late to stop their rat from being a bully but just in time to yell at her for giving the little beast a slap.

Forget them.

She pulls up Kazu, checking his face. He spits out a mouthful of sand but he’s okay.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she snaps at the other parents. They’re already pulling their son back, forming a tight unit around their child. Side-by-side, shoulders pressed to make a wall.

“Your boy started it,” the father says.

“He took my shell!” Kazu sobs, and she yanks him behind her.

“Your brat stomped on his head!”

“Your boy needs to know how to stand up for himself.” He’s a small, sharp-looking man. Red-cheeked, like he might drink too much, with one arm wrapped around his silent wife’s shoulders. “Perhaps if he had a father to teach him how to behave -”

“It’s none of your business!” 

“I have a father!” Kazu protests, looking out from behind her skirt.

“Kazu, hush!" 

Oh no.

Did she push him back too fast? Was her voice too loud? 

The father sneers. The mother looks at her pityingly. Like she gives a damn what they think when Kazu’s big blue eyes are wide and frightened like that. Yeah, the other boy's face is red, but his bottom ought to be as well. She'd be smacking it right now.

“Come on,” she says, softly now. “We were just about to leave.”

The apples fell in the sand. A treat for the seagulls. She kicked a little bit of sand on their lunch, but Kazu eats a riceball without complaint as she packs up. They finish their lunch on the train, silent until they’re finally back in Kusugauracho district and she snaps at the workman on his lunch break because that window should have been fixed already. He’s had all morning.

Kazu goes upstairs to their apartment immediately. When she’s finished lecturing the workman and washed their lunchboxes in the kitchen tucked behind the shop and smoked a cigarette in the alley she finally follows him upstairs.

The door to their bedroom is slid shut and the television is turned on, tinting the dark room beyond the panel blue. She steps as softly as possible. Presses her ear to the door and listens.

He’s watching Superman again. Of course he is. 

She slides the door open just a crack to peek through. Kazu's rolled out his bed already and onscreen Superman is flying, arms stretched in front of him. Flat on his belly, Kazu holds his balled-up fists out too. 

 


End file.
